The world is more interesting than you think.
Unexpected facts, big ideas, and little discoveries. Find something that sparks your curiosity today.
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Why menus hide the dollar signs
Menu engineering proves we are incredibly easy to rob. By simply deleting the scary little dollar sign icon next to the numbers on a high-end restaurant menu,…
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Why shower water sounds like your phone ringing
Ringxiety turns routine hygiene into a phantom tech nightmare. The ambient white noise of running shower water perfectly hits the exact frequencies needed to…
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Comedians test new jokes in tiny clubs
Before an arena tour sells out in minutes, elite comedians quietly sneak into obscure, tiny venues to read their raw, unfunny ideas from a crumpled notebook.…
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The companies paying credit raters get graded by them
It is definitely not a massive conflict of interest when the grader is directly paid by the student. Corporate credit rating agencies issue crucial safety…
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Salvador has an elevator for crossing town
Connecting a sprawling upper and lower city is tough, so Salvador just installed a colossal art deco lift. The Lacerda Elevator moves tens of thousands of…
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Why pregnancy makes you need the bathroom constantly
Because internal anatomical real estate is severely limited, the uterus just aggressively flops over the top of the bladder. As it expands during gestation,…
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A bicep curl is just reducing a joint angle
In the sterile world of kinesiology, doing a basic bicep curl is dramatically referred to as flexion. You are quite literally just aggressively reducing the…
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How companies offer ownership without a vote
Giving your engineering team actual ownership of the company means they might eventually get a real vote. To avoid this horrible fate, corporations invented…
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Why a boomerang comes back
Throwing a stick and expecting it to come back feels like magic, but it is just aggressive physics. A boomerang is essentially a set of spinning airplane…
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Straightening joints aggressively maximizes anatomical angles
When you lock out your elbows or knees, you are engaging in pure anatomical extension. By forcefully contracting the antagonist muscles, you completely…
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High atmospheric pressure heavily suppresses local storms
When weather forecasters celebrate high pressure, they are essentially praising a massive atmospheric bully. Heavy, sinking air violently pushes downward,…
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Why orchestras make musicians audition behind a curtain
To completely eliminate the rampant, embarrassing biases of elite musical directors, modern orchestras require candidates to play behind a thick curtain.…
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Kraken tentacles dragging galleons underwater
Giant squids throwing tantrums is a staple of maritime terror. This massive cephalopod supposedly wrapped its arms around entire ships, dragging them into the…
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Inertia keeps objects blindly moving during collisions
If you aggressively slam on your car brakes, your coffee cup violently flies forward, completely ignorant of your driving choices. Inertia means mass…
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Why wind turbines aren't birds' biggest threat
People love to vilify giant spinning wind turbines as apex predators of the sky, but the statistics paint a different picture. Your innocent suburban glass…
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When playing SimCity required an internet connection
Forcing players to connect to a server to play by themselves is a stroke of corporate genius. EA launched their beloved city builder with mandatory online…
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Application programming interfaces form recurring revenue
Why build a whole application when you can just charge developers to talk to your servers? Application programming interfaces allow different software systems…
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Market makers profit entirely from the bid-ask spread
The house always wins, especially when the house quietly sets the rates. Market makers provide liquidity to financial exchanges by constantly offering to…
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Michael Jackson learned the moonwalk from a TV dancer
The seemingly gravity-defying backwards glide wasn't summoned from the ether; it was learned through private lessons with a television dancer. The superstar…
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The muscles that stop you from moving too far
For every muscle trying to move your body, there is another muscle desperately fighting to pump the brakes. Antagonists sit exactly on the opposite side of a…
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Why road-trip snacks are mostly corn
Perusing the aisles of a highway convenience store reveals a staggering lack of agricultural diversity. Almost every salty, neon-dusted snack bag available is…
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Steam algorithms push visual novels to all users
You can play exclusively hardcore military shooters for a decade, and the algorithm will still try to sell you a dating simulator about pigeons. The digital…
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Color film existed long before The Wizard of Oz
Despite the collective cultural delusion that the world transitioned from black-and-white to technicolor right when Dorothy opened that farmhouse door, tinted…
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Technical debt acts as an invisible corporate liability
Why write elegant code today when you can let the next generation of engineers suffer tomorrow? Technical debt is the implied cost of future reworking caused…
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